From reform to results: what global business reforms mean for India

As India enters the World Bank’s Business Ready assessment, reforms in France, the European Union and the Philippines offer three lessons: decide fundamental questions early, reduce regulatory fragmentation and give investors long-term certainty.

For many years, the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business ranking influenced how governments positioned themselves in the eyes of investors. It measured matters such as starting a business, paying taxes, trading across borders and enforcing contracts, before placing economies in an annual league table. The ranking was discontinued in 2021 following concerns over data irregularities and ethical lapses.

Its successor, Business Ready, or B-Ready, takes a broader approach. It examines regulatory frameworks, public services and operational efficiency across the life cycle of a business. As India joins the assessment in 2026, the important question is not how many reforms it has announced, but whether it has become consistently easier to establish, operate, expand and exit a business in India.

Recent reforms in France, the European Union and the Philippines provide three complementary insights.

France: Decide Early and Assess Before Regulating

In May, France adopted its law on simplifying economic life (Loi de simplification de la vie économique). Among its principal provisions is one that allows critical questions concerning major projects to be considered earlier. For instance, whether a project serves an “imperative reason of overriding public interest” can be examined at the project-declaration stage, rather than emerging much later during environmental approvals. This does not remove environmental scrutiny. However, it makes it possible to identify the project’s importance and the safeguards it must meet before substantial capital has been committed.

India’s renewable energy experience offers a useful parallel. Solar and wind projects in Rajasthan and Gujarat were impacted between 2021 and 2024, after concerns over transmission lines crossing the habitat of the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard led to restrictions, litigation and project delays. An earlier, coordinated determination—balancing renewable-energy needs with conservation requirements and identifying permitted corridors and mitigation measures—could have provided greater certainty to developers and conservation authorities alike.

France’s reform also reflects a broader regulatory principle: before introducing a new rule, governments should assess its necessity, determine whether it duplicates an existing obligation, quantify its likely compliance cost, and provide businesses with adequate time to adapt.

India’s 2023 laptop import controls or the Quality Control Orders issued from time to time for different industries illustrate the point. A new licensing / quality requirement affects several international companies, especially when businesses are given limited time to comply. Following industry representations, the government has often deferred their applicability. This underscores the point that even a legitimate objective to promote domestic manufacturing is more effective when preceded with prior stakeholder consultation and accompanied by a realistic transition period.

The EU: Reduce Regulatory Fragmentation

The European Union has a common market, but businesses continue to encounter divergent national requirements, duplicated procedures and uneven enforcement. Its Single Market Strategy and “One Europe, One Market” roadmap seek to simplify rules and remove the most harmful internal barriers.

India faces a comparable coordination challenge. A company may comply with a central framework but still require separate State and municipal permissions, registrations and inspections. A digital portal is not a genuine single window if applicants must continue to approach several authorities independently.

The consequences are tangible. A recent assessment in Karnataka reportedly found that, when land conversion, fire clearances, pollution-control consent and other permissions were taken together, some businesses could wait as long as 450 days before commencing operations. The State Government’s subsequent call for time-bound approvals and a stronger single-window system recognised the central issue: attracting investment is only the beginning; enabling it to become operational creates jobs and economic value.

The EU experience, therefore, offers India a second lesson: reform must remove fragmentation, not merely digitise it. Government systems must communicate with one another, approvals should be recognised across jurisdictions where appropriate, and businesses should not repeatedly submit information already held by another public authority.

The Philippines: Offers Long-Term Certainty

The Philippines’ CREATE MORE Act allows qualifying investments longer periods of special corporate taxation or enhanced deductions, depending on the nature, location and strategic importance of the project.

Its principal attraction is certainty. Manufacturing, infrastructure and technology investments are not planned around one Budget cycle. Investors must know whether the tax treatment, incentives and market-access conditions on which they relied will remain sufficiently stable for capital to be recovered and businesses scaled.

India’s Next Reform Frontier

India has already undertaken significant reforms. The Jan Vishwas legislation replaces criminal prosecution for hundreds of minor and technical defaults across 79 Central laws with warnings, proportionate civil penalties and administrative adjudication. The 2026 insolvency amendments seek to reduce delays, clarify the verification of creditor claims and strengthen creditor oversight during resolution and liquidation.

Proposed corporate law reforms would similarly decriminalise procedural defaults and simplify company compliance, fast-track mergers and voluntary closure. The Income-tax Act, 2025 reorganises the tax law in clearer language and within a simpler framework, while recent Budget measures seek to reduce parallel penalty proceedings and tax litigation. Customs reforms envisage a common digital platform and a single window for approvals from different cargo-clearance agencies. Alongside these, commercial courts, enforceable mediated settlements and institutional arbitration mechanisms are intended to make business disputes’ resolution faster and less costly. These initiatives deserve recognition.

The next phase must focus on the investor’s operating experience: predictable rules, stable transitions, time-bound approvals, interoperable central and state systems and transparent inspections.

These measures also reduce integrity risks. Every unnecessary physical interface, unclear requirement or discretionary approval creates scope for delay, inconsistent treatment or improper demands. Anti-corruption compliance is therefore not separate from ease of doing business. Transparent workflows, digital audit trails and clearly allocated responsibility make business both easier and cleaner.

B-Ready allows India to move the discussion from reforms announced to results experienced. France demonstrates the value of early decisions and regulatory impact assessment; the EU, the importance of coordination; and the Philippines, the power of long-term certainty.

India’s challenge is to bring all three together. The jurisdictions that attract and retain global capital will not necessarily have the fewest rules, but rules that are clear, coordinated and reliably administered.

Rohini Rangachari Karnik teaches French at the Alliance française de Delhi; Priyanka Goswami is a lawyer practising in New Delhi and serves as Legal Advisor to BORBHAG Consulting

Published on October 14, 2026